Lubaina Himid

I think there was.

Winning the Turner Prize meant that people on the streets of Preston would say, are you that person who's up for that prize?

And I'd say, yeah.

And they'd say, I hope you win it.

So I knew something was different then.

Yeah, I'd say so.

I would really describe myself as a painter.

I wasn't trained as a painter.

I was trained as a theatre designer.

But I've sort of, over the decades, got a bit more confident about describing myself as a painter.

The feeling that they have agency, they can make a difference, they can do something that they had never done before, and in a way that they only need to do a sort of small thing.

Together we're all doing these small things, and then they add up to something.

Yeah, I mean, I think because I trained as a theatre designer, I'm absolutely convinced that visitors to the shows or to the projects that I'm working on are kind of bringing themselves and all their lives and their loves and their everything to that space and animating it like an audience would to sort of a performance.

Oh, they met in London.

My father, who's originally from the Camorran Islands but lived in Zanzibar, was in London at London University.

My mother was at the Royal College of Art doing textile design there.

And they met because my mother loved to party.

And they knew lots of East African political people, musicians, journalists, those sorts of people.

And they met at parties and went to parties.

Well, my father went back to Zanzibar first, and then he, in that old-fashioned way that they used to speak in the 20th century, he sent for her.